


Art Appreciation

by pomegrenadier



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, But mostly fluff, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Team as Family, superficially it's only a little AU but actually it's like. really really really off-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27622772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pomegrenadier/pseuds/pomegrenadier
Summary: Crayce takes her teammates to an art museum.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 28





	Art Appreciation

**Author's Note:**

> IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW:  
> \- Crayce was originally the Trooper; some stuff went down early in Trooper Chapter 3 and now she's the Bounty Hunter  
> \- timelines are fake  
> \- just roll with it okay  
> \- (ex-) Agent is along for the ride for Reasons  
> \- pretend Gault hasn't been recruited yet shhhhh  
> \- also I have made up literally everything about the art museum and its contents  
> \- if you have recently read anything else I have written about this agent then prepare for extreme mood whiplash

"... Or, hear me out, we could just ... take the tour. You know, 'cause we aren't mass-murdering assholes," Crayce says slowly.

Baron Zacar Girard's expression curdles like slightly spoiled milk. "House Alde," he says, with great patience, "is a vassal house of _Organa._ They are at war with us as much as anyone else."

"Uh. Yeah. With _yo_ _u."_

The Baron sniffs. "Suit yourself, bounty hunter, but know that House Alde will not suffer intrusion should your true allegiances be discovered. And do use caution. The museum holds priceless cultural treasures—"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, no pissing on the royal knick-knacks, I hear you, goodbye," Crayce says.

* * *

Crayce stomps out of the office and collects her team. "Drop's at the Alde Royal History Museum in a fake relic. Baron thought we should blast our way in. Which is just plain stupid, so we're gonna play civilian, take the tour, and _not_ kill anyone."

"I've never been to a museum as a fake civilian who wasn't there to kill anyone, before," Cipher Nine muses.

"That's ... that's great, buddy," Mako says. "But, y'know, I haven't gotten to do much touristy stuff, either. And all the holonet reviews say the ARHM has a _great_ collection and some pretty decent guided tours, so hey, maybe it'll be fun."

"There's touristy stuff, and there's _touristy stuff,"_ Crayce says grimly. "This is the second one. Trust me."

* * *

The Alde Royal History Museum is as boring and awful now as it was when she was a kid. Lots of sparkly junk and stuffy portraits and clothes once worn by important people who were born important and did important things involving other important people before dying importantly, to the dismay and sorrow of all the little people who weren't important.

It's great if you're some Core Worlder on vacation with your family. It's less great if you're a local on a school trip your parents could barely afford.

Fucking Great Houses. Fucking _Alderaan._

Cipher Nine is peering at the exhibits with apparent interest, and Mako seems fascinated by the security systems. Crayce, for her part, is not exactly having _fun,_ but nobody's dying and she is determined to make this a positive experience. They all need more of those, damn it.

Still. Not the best museum for the job. If she could actually pick somewhere to take them ... yeah, no, the ARHM would not have been her first choice. Shame the places she remembers from her childhood are all in Organa or Organa-allied territory.

Although ... Aside from a few dirty looks from a couple of people who can probably _smell_ the commoner on her—or just hate cyborgs—all three of them have been able to pass for definitely-not-bounty-hunters-on-a-job pretty well, so far.

Maybe once they find Duke Corwin, they can do this for real.

* * *

The curator of the ARHM is incredibly helpful once Cipher Nine turns himself into a mid-level noble's snotty insurance guy, ever so concerned about potential forgeries in the collection.

Mako stands around, looks harmless, and makes the security cameras _dance._ House Alde's goons won't have a clue they were even here.

And Crayce starts looking up ticket prices and hours of operation for the Alaia Vorn Museum of Art in South Pallista.

* * *

Less than a week later ...

"Whoa," Mako says as they successfully negotiate the revolving doors and enter the atrium.

Banners advertising various exhibits hang from the high ceiling. Graceful pillars march down either side of the chamber; halfway up, there's a railing for the mezzanine level, with tourists leaning against it to watch the room below. Tall stained glass windows send beams of light splashing down to illuminate everything in gold and red and blue and green.

Crayce takes a deep breath and grins. "Where do you guys want to start?"

* * *

"That one's just somebody having fun," Mako says, pointing at a large canvas covered in colorful bursts and whorls of pigment.

"How do you know?" says Cipher Nine. Republic accent, of course.

"How can you not have fun throwing that much paint around?"

A nearby museum employee smiles at them. "It's called _In Defiance._ And yes, it's very much about having fun. Happiness, despite everything. Look at the lower edges, the way there's so much black, the hints of purple. That's actually a completely different formulation from the rest of the paint—the artist, Telkor Varnet, acquired a set of Sith-made pigments, and used those for the darker colors. His home city was bombed nearly to ruins by the Empire, during the Battle of Alderaan. It left an impression, of course, but he chose to keep looking for reasons to hope."

"... How did he get his hands on Sith paint during the war?" Mako says, studiously not looking at either of her associates.

"His boyfriend was an _independent freighter captain,_ if you catch my drift," says the employee, sotto voce.

Mako nods sagely. "Oooh. So it's art, but it's also sort of crime. Neat."

* * *

Cipher Nine spends several minutes examining a small holo-sculpture in the corner of the Intangible Arts exhibit. It projects delicate threads of silvery-blue light that weave and twist between each other in endless loops, never tangling or faltering, just constant motion.

"Lying," he concludes.

"I think it's supposed to be a demonstration of technical skill," says Mako, a little distant as she looks it up with her implant. "Basically just the artist showing off."

"That may be, but it still looks like lying."

"So ... the inside of your head is randomly-generated blue squiggles?"

"Don't be ridiculous. They're _red_ squiggles," he says, gesturing at his optics.

Mako snickers.

Crayce watches them, lips twitching.

* * *

Mako's staring at a painting called _The Lesson._ Corellian artist, almost two hundred years old. It's a hyper-realistic style, dark shadows and brilliant highlights. An alley, somewhere in Coronet City, maybe. Late-afternoon sunlight spilling down the sides of the buildings, reflected off windows. An overturned child's hovertrike. A kid with a scraped knee, being gently helped to their feet by an old man. The kid's obviously been crying, puffy-eyed and runny-nosed, but they're laughing at something the old man said.

Crayce sighs and rests a hand on Mako's shoulder. "You okay?"

"I'm good," says Mako. "Just ... Thinking, I guess. Remembering."

"Good memories?"

"Yeah." She looks up at Crayce and cracks a rueful smile. "Only for me it was slicing into the wrong database and then getting booted out with some _really_ nasty countermeasures. Braden made me soup, for the headache."

"I'm glad you had him," says Crayce. "And I bet he was real glad to have you."

Mako swallows, blinks a few times. "Crap. Um. Yeah. So, uh, so what's the lesson in the title supposed to be? Don't get cocky, kiddo?" she says, a little too brightly.

"Maybe. I don't know, I thought it was more like ... you'll be okay. You'll get hurt, but there are people who will help."

"... Can I have a hug?" Mako says, her voice very small.

Crayce hugs her tight.

* * *

_Thrantas In Flight Over Elysium At Dusk_ is one of the museum's more famous pieces, a centuries-old painting depicting a flock of them in a soft purplish sky full of puffy, light-gilded clouds.

"Is it weird that I kind of want to lick it?" Mako says.

Crayce gives this due consideration, then grimaces. "No, I would be totally supportive if you licked it, 'cause now that you mention it ... yeah. Tempting."

"I hate it," Cipher Nine says, delighted. "I have no idea why, but I absolutely hate it."

* * *

Mako takes three steps into the holo-portraiture wing and immediately turns around to leave. "Nope, no thanks, I'm going back to the tooth-rotting pastoral stuff."

"You okay?" says Crayce.

"Why do they turn to look at you? It's _creepy."_

"Uh ... something about observers and being observed and capturing the mutual connection of artist, subject, and audience, I think?" she says, peering at a helpful explanatory sign on the wall.

Cipher Nine tilts his head to one side. "Reminds me of headquarters."

"Reminds _me_ of getting noticed by a corporate security system right before it starts trying to kill you," says Mako.

Crayce winces. "Tooth-rotting Alderaanian pastoralism it is."

* * *

"That's a person," says Cipher Nine.

Crayce looks at the painting. It's a series of concentric bands of color, alternating between murky grey and deep, glossy black. The grey bands are thickest at the outer edges of the canvas but get thinner further in; the black bands do the opposite, starting out almost delicate and growing to heavy slabs. The bands surround an asymmetrical blotch of crimson paint, just above and right of center. It ... doesn't look like the bands are radiating out from the blotch. It looks like the blotch is being trapped. Crushed.

She frowns. Above and right of center, like a humanoid heart viewed face-on.

Shit, _that's a person._

She checks the placard next to the painting, but it's got basically nothing useful. _Untitled,_ Meyari Drall, from Talravin, dated fifty-some years before the war began. "Wonder what happened to her," Crayce says.

Cipher Nine takes an uncharacteristically shaky breath. "That's how it feels."

There's a lot of _it_ he could be referring to and none of it is good. She lets her fingers brush against his. "Yeah?" she says.

"... I don't know. It's—" He breaks off. "I don't know."

* * *

There is a truly indescribable ... _object_... on the plinth.

"... I don't get it," says Crayce.

"Yeah, no, me neither," says Mako.

"It has an ulterior motive," says Cipher Nine.

"Oh, I don't like that at _all,_ why did you have to make it creepy instead of just weird and confusing ..."

* * *

They have an exhibit on Republic propaganda art from the years leading up to the Treaty of Coruscant. Right inside, there's a holo-sculpture commemorating the valiant heroes who lost their lives defending Alderaan from the predations of the Empire.

"So, honest question, is this morbid curiosity or just straight-up masochism, for you two?" Mako says, keeping her voice down as they enter the exhibit hall.

"I'll let you know," says Crayce, jaw tense.

FIGHT FOR FREEDOM! JOIN THE REPUBLIC ARMY, screams a poster, a line of helmetless soldiers in white-and-goldenrod armor saluting proudly, the Senate Rotunda in the background.

THEY'VE GOT YOUR SIX – DO YOU HAVE THEIRS? says another, with a dashing Jedi Knight back-to-back with a Republic trooper, fending off a horde of faceless Imperials and deformed Sith.

THE IMPERIAL MACHINE: a grey-armored soldier with a cracked helmet, through which can be seen a blank, skull-like droid face. In the background, a perfect formation of identical soldiers, stretching to the vanishing point.

DARKNESS FALLS ... UNLESS WE FIGHT! A pureblood Sith looms vast and ominous over the top half of the poster. Tendrils drip from its cheeks and chin, its eyes blaze yellow in the shadow of its hood, and its clawed hands stretch out as if to grab the viewer. In the foreground, a lone human woman—quite possibly Alderaanian, by her complexion—in Republic uniform. She's gazing upwards with a determined expression, raising the shining Republic flag high in a heroic pose.

THIS IS HOW THEY SEE YOU, beneath a cowering family of battered yet photogenic Twi'leks, each with targeting crosshairs over their head.

"Wrong reticule shape," says Cipher Nine.

Crayce stares at DARKNESS FALLS and understands, on a visceral level, why people get the urge to dramatically punch mirrors. Hell, would it really have been so bad to bring the wrist-mounted flamethrower?

"Okay. That's enough. We're done," Mako says, grabbing each of their elbows and tugging them away.

* * *

_Perspective_ takes up an entire room. Hundreds of tiny orbs of frosted glass, lit from within by soft gold light, float and dance through the air—except for one, a larger metallic sphere held steady in the center. The lights reflect off its surface, glittering and strangely cold.

"Coruscant?" Mako says.

"Yep," says Crayce. She hunts through the flock of glowing orbs and sidles around a gaggle of other visitors until she's right beneath the only free-floating orb that's glowing green, not gold. She gestures upward. "And that little guy is Alderaan."

"... This is political."

"This is _very_ political," Crayce says, smirking. "Pre-war, but it was considered pretty edgy even back then. Last time I was in the area there was some newsburst about one of the vassal Houses pushing for the museum to take it down, something about the importance of Republic unity in dangerous times, the usual crap."

"Last time meaning when you were a kid, or ...?"

"Couple years ago." With Havoc Squad. With Jorgan and Dorne. She shakes off the memory, shrugs. "Didn't do any touristy stuff, there wasn't enough time. Funny to hear about, though."

"The museum refused to remove the piece, then?" says Cipher Nine.

"Looks like."

His eyebrows go up. "Interesting." There's a beat of silence with a distinctly Imperial accent, and then he gestures at the flock of identical gold lights. "What about their perspectives?"

Crayce grins. "Watch."

It takes nearly a full minute, but then a light out at the edge of the display flashes bright purple before fading back to gold. Another minute, and there's a flicker of red from the other side of the room.

"Ooh," says Mako. _"Layers."_

* * *

As a kid she loved the swirling silver of the _Solar Wind_ sculpture, the way it looked like it was breathing. Like it was something alive.

Standing in front of it now ...

Yeah, Crayce is definitely crying. A lot.

Cipher Nine touches her shoulder. "Company, or no?"

"Stay," she manages, and he takes her hand, laces their fingers together. She scrubs at her eye with the heel of her other hand. "Fuck, sorry, I just—it's, uh, it's kind of. Getting to me."

He looks at the sculpture. "Why this one?"

She takes a breath. "My family visited, when I was little, before we moved to Coruscant. Did the whole tour. My dad had me on his shoulders, 'cause I was tired and short and everything was up too high. And he stood there for, like, ten minutes, while I just stared at it. Cranky seven-year-old in an art museum and I was just _staring_ at it." She gestures at the sculpture. "So—so turns out the artist, Fen Doru, they made this piece after being exiled from their homeworld. Took the wrong stand at the wrong time, pissed off someone powerful. There's a plaque somewhere in here. But it's—it's about being adrift. Lost. Not as a bad thing. Look at it, it's _beautiful._ It's ... everywhere you can go, when you can't go home. And they came here. Alderaan."

She can practically hear the gears in his head, whirring away. "I understand," he says.

She swallows. "I don't even like this planet," she rasps.

"Oh, fuck this planet," he says easily, and Crayce laughs, sharp and loud enough to echo. She gets a few more of those dirty looks, but that just sends her into a longer fit of sniffly giggles, half-muffled as she buries her face in his shoulder.

Yeah. Fuck this planet.

He squeezes her hand, and it feels like solid ground.

* * *

They go to the gift shop, because that's what you _do_ , at an art museum. Novelty junk, art kits for kids, prints and holo-replicas of famous pieces, jewelry, posters, clothes ... Everything's overpriced, but Mako immediately falls in love with a mug patterned after the stained glass in the atrium, and Crayce snags it for her, brooking no argument.

Cipher Nine lurks by a bin of plush toys made to look like the museum's mascot, a stylized—and exceptionally cute—pastel blue vorn tiger. The bin happens to have excellent sight lines over most of the shop's interior. There might not be anything more to it than that, but, well. There might not _not._ Onto the counter goes a plushie, along with the mug.

He holds the plushie very gently for the entire speeder ride back to Rhu Caenus Spaceport, so Crayce is pretty sure she made the right call.

Once they're safe on the ship, Mako makes caf to break in the new mug, and slurps from it with a satisfied expression. "That was fun," she says. "Was kinda worried it'd be all hoitier and toitier than thou, at first, but today was ... it was really nice."

Crayce flops into the seat next to her with a hard _clunk._ Damn, it is good to be back in armor. "Still owe you that beach vacation."

"Oh, I'm saving the IOU until after we've won the Great Hunt," Mako says. "But until then—thanks. I mean it."

Across the table, Cipher Nine looks directly at her and smiles, small and careful. He still hasn't put down the plushie. "What she said, but more ominous."

"Anytime," Crayce says, face going warm.


End file.
